On Apr 4, 2005 9:52 AM, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Apr 4, 2005 9:37 PM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
> Of all the ideas that I saw proposed, I think that the absolute best
> compromise between those who love the holiday and those who are not
> great fans of it would be to have the main page be 100% real and
> accurate in every last respect, but *also* to have it be filled with
> stories that people would naturally suspect to be hoaxes.
This could be very cute, if done correctly. We might also choose
another outlet for community April Fools' jokes and hoaxes; perhaps
the Community Portal.
> And finally, and most important, it appeals to
all of us on both sides
> of the debate who are intellectual snobs. :-) Any lame website can
> come up with fake stories *yawn* to trick people *yawn*.
I don't want to trash my rep as an intellectual snob... but we are
probably the only website in the world that can come up with a fake
full-fledged encyclopedia article, with careful background research,
references to [real] scholarly work on the [fake] subject, and
elaborate footnotes.
Great minds think alike, as BBC had the same thing:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4400535.stm
Nice catch :-) Of course, BBC *also* runs various April Fools' hoaxes
each year.
--
+sj+